Michel Janssen argues that often used patterns of reasoning that he
calls common origin inferences (or COIs) count as evidence for some
ideas over others. He sees that special relativity is preferable to
some mature version of Lorentz's theory (such as Lorentz's own
1906/1915 version in his "The Theory of Electrons" or Ives, or
Prokhovnik, etc.) because special relativity *explains* things that
are unexplained coincidences in Lorentz's theory. Janssen development
and elaboration of this thesis can be found in his recent papers:

"COI Stories: Explanation and Evidence from Copernicus to Hockney." [
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~janss011/pdf files/COI-POS.pdf ] Longer version
of a paper in Perspectives on Science, 10 (2002): 457-522.

"Reconsidering a Scientific Revolution: The Case of Einstein versus
Lorentz."
Physics in Perspective, 4 (2002): 421-446.

More related papers can be found on his website [
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~janss011/ ].

I'm interested in how LET supporters counter this criticism. Do these
COIs make the standard special relativity (Einstein-Minkowski)
interpretation a "better" or "real" theory while LET is not? Does the
standard interpretation have it's own as "bad" or "worse" explanatory
problems that LET does not?